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Defense Calls Padilla Incompetent for Trial

MIAMI, Feb. 22 — In a highly unusual competency hearing in federal court here Thursday, defense lawyers began to lay out their argument that Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born former enemy combatant, was rendered incompetent to stand trial on terrorism conspiracy charges by what they characterize as crippling mistreatment by the government.

Two mental health experts, a forensic psychiatrist and a forensic psychologist hired by the defense, testified that Mr. Padilla, 36, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his isolation and scores of interrogation sessions during three years and eight months in a military brig in South Carolina.

“He’s unfit to stand trial,” said Patricia A. Zapf, the psychologist, describing Mr. Padilla as so “immobilized by his anxiety” and so distrustful that he is incapable of assisting his own lawyers — whom he at times suspects of being agents of the government — in preparing his defense.

Dr. Zapf said Mr. Padilla, a United States citizen who was initially accused of plotting a dirty bomb attack against the United States and held without charges by the military, believed that he would end up “back in the brig and that he would die there.”

Mr. Padilla, who was indicted in late 2005 on terrorism conspiracy charges that do not include the dirty bomb plot but do carry a possible life sentence, sat calmly through Thursday’s hearing as lawyers and doctors discussed his facial tics, anxieties and feelings of hopelessness.

Wearing a tan jumpsuit, sandals with socks, wire-rimmed glasses and a wispy mustache, Mr. Padilla occasionally chatted amiably with his lawyers and once turned around and gave his mother, Estela Lebron of Broward County, a broad, sustained smile. His leg irons were barely visible beneath the rolled-up cuffs of the pants that belong to the federal detention center where he is now being held in isolation.

Photo

Jose Padilla is seen in this undated photo wearing noise-blocking headphones and blacked-out goggles in custody as an enemy combatant.Credit
U.S. Government (handout)

In a recent motion to the court, Anthony J. Natale, a federal public defender and one of Mr. Padilla’s lawyers, said, “Like many aspects of Mr. Padilla’s case, his claim of incompetency is unique in that it is the government that is squarely to blame for his current mental state and his concomitant ability to stand trial.”

Marcia G. Cooke, the federal judge presiding over the case, ordered a Bureau of Prisons evaluation of Mr. Padilla late last year when his lawyers raised the issue of his competency. That review, which was complicated by Mr. Padilla’s refusal to submit to testing by prison psychologists, concluded recently that Mr. Padilla was competent to stand trial.

Prosecution lawyers urged Judge Cooke to accept that evaluation as neutral and final. They opposed a full-blown competency hearing that examined Mr. Padilla’s treatment in the brig, calling the subject of his detention there a “sideshow.” But Judge Cooke ordered officials from the brig to testify, and they are expected to do so when the hearing continues next week.

If Judge Cooke finds Mr. Padilla incompetent to stand trial, prosecutors have made it clear they will appeal that decision. If a ruling of incompetency were upheld, Mr. Padilla might then be transferred by the government to a psychiatric institution with the goal of making him capable of standing trial.

Mr. Padilla, according to the defense-hired doctors who examined him, is terrified of ending up in a psychiatric hospital and denies that he has any mental disorders. During their evaluations, they said, Mr. Padilla denied that he was anxious, while flushing, sweating, twitching and visibly manifesting his anxiety.

The doctors testified that Mr. Padilla refused to discuss the details of his case with his lawyers, growing agitated when asked to review video recordings of his interrogations — 87 such tapes have been turned over to the defense — or to listen to wiretapped phone conversations.

According to the testimony, Mr. Padilla, a Muslim convert, also declines to answer his lawyers’ questions about his whereabouts or activities after he left the United States in 1998 on what he told his family was a spiritual journey but what prosecutors see as a mission to conduct “global jihad.” The questioning, according to the doctors, echoes the questioning of his interrogators.

“When asked, he shuts down and says, ‘I can’t, I can’t,’ ” Dr. Hegarty said. Prosecutors challenged the idea that Mr. Padilla was incapable of communicating with his lawyers, noting that the lawyers had submitted an affidavit signed by him with a motion to dismiss the charges based on “outrageous government conduct.” That motion contained detailed accusations by Mr. Padilla about abuses in the brig, including hooding, stress positions, assaults, threats of imminent execution and the administration of “truth serums.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Defense Calls Padilla Incompetent for Trial. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe